


Trying to Stay Awake

by Creativia



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Exhaustion, Gen, Humor, One Shot, Procrastinating, Sanders shorts character, Sleepiness, Stress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 21:22:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20896307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Creativia/pseuds/Creativia
Summary: Thomas procrastinated again. Now he and the sides need to try and stay awake to finish this assignment. This proves to be difficult though with sleep calling to them.





	Trying to Stay Awake

**Author's Note:**

> So lately I've gotten really into the web series The Sanders Sides. This is my first time writing for this fandom though, so I hope you all like it. I thought it would be fun to write fanfiction for this show, and this struck me as an interesting idea.  
Constructive criticism is appreciated. Will probably go back and edit if needed.

Thomas stared blankly at the computer screen in front of him. The only thing that seemed to register was the blinking cursor halfway between a word he had been in the middle of typing. The screen seemed very bright to him. Almost burning his eyes, even though the brightness shouldn’t be any different than it normally was. The lighting in the room had been dimming gradually while he had been sitting at his computer, which made the page in front of him seem brighter.

He was working on something…

It was taking him a moment to remember what that was. He could see the screen in front of him open to a document with words on it, so that seemed to help. It was…a paper. That’s right.

His eyelids were starting to droop. He shook his head and sat up semi straight, although a bit awkwardly, his shoulders and head hunched over as though to help him to focus on what was in front of him. He needed to get this done.

* * *

Meanwhile in the mind palace, understandably, the sides were not doing much better.

They were in a mind palace equivalent of the room Thomas was currently in. Logan was sitting at the computer, since he normally took control for Thomas’s academic related activities. His eyes were wide and staring at the computer in front of him in order to focus. His posture was very stiff and straight, which would not be so unusual for the logical side if his body weren’t so tensed. His hair was slightly disheveled. His eyes were bloodshot, not that any of them were able to notice.

The other sides were sitting around him, in chairs they had pulled up, in order to help Thomas, get this done. They weren’t doing much better than him though. Virgil, on one side was tapping his fingers on the desk with one hand and biting the thumbnail of his other hand. Every few moments he would blink very hard. Repeatedly every so often muttering,

“Come on come on. We need to get this done. We need to stay awake.” He was somewhat surprised that Logan hadn’t told him to be quiet yet. Maybe he deemed it a good reminder.

Roman was leaning forward on the other side of Logan. He was also staring forward at the screen but not saying anything. Honestly, his presence here seemed kind of pointless. Yes, at times for assignments like this it was good to have his creative inspiration, but he wasn’t contributing anything at that moment. All he was doing was struggling to stay awake.

And Patton? Yeah, he was already asleep. On the other side of Virgil, he had fallen asleep with his front clumsily on the desk away from where Logan was working on the computer. The position did not look very comfortable. The side of his face was mashed against the desk. His glasses were askew. The combination made him look utterly ridiculous. If Virgil wasn’t so worried about this assignment, he would have found Patton’s current position to be amusing and cute. But he currently couldn’t focus on anything else. He just kept muttering the same things to himself.

Thankfully Logan seemed to snap out of the trance he was in and began typing again. Virgil let out a small breath in relief yet continued to tap nervously.

“Come on. We just got to stay awake and finish this. Come on.” The room was so quite all that could be heard was the tapping of fingers. Logan’s on the keyboard and Virgil’s on the desk. They could do this.

They could do this.

The internal battle was continuing. Staying awake and worrying about getting this done.

_Can’t you just feel the pull of sleep at the fringe of your consciousness?_

A soothing lullaby-like voice seemed to overcome the mind palace.

His thinking was starting to falter again.

_Your eyelids are becoming heavier. Even the wood of the desk sounds good to lay your tired head on._

Roman collapsed forward, barely missing hitting his head on the side of the desk. They would not have noticed if it wasn’t for the thud that came from it. Virgil was barely awake enough to consider checking if the other was alright. Considering snoring came from that way, he was probably fine.

Logan’s typing faltered. He took a moment to glance at Virgil, who was starting to sway.  
  
“Virgil?” He called, voice sounding a little shakier than normal. Virgil blinked again and turned to face Logan again. Logan has an uncharacteristically desperate look on your face.

“I need you to stay with me, alright? Help me to get this done. Anxiety is what normally gets us going in these desperate situations. Later I will surely lecture Thomas on his poor sleeping habits and procrastination issues again, and although it can be detrimental to health at this state, I really need you to help me to stay awake in order to get this done, alright? You’re better at this than me.”

Virgil was definitely surprised to be hearing Logan beg for his help like this. He nodded and scooted forward more.

“Alright. We just need to keep going. Patton would probably be better at encouraging you in this instance, but for now, all I can tell you is that we barely have an hour left to finish this so just keep typing. This is important. Thomas needs to do well at this. He’s already at a disadvantage starting college classes again at this time in his life. He already is worried about feeling weird doing this. Even if it’s the first assignment like this, he needs to do well. And if he doesn’t get it done now, who knows how stressful it will be to try doing this later with all the other stuff he has to do with YouTube and life. What will his professor think of him if he doesn’t get it in on time? Will it get even harder from here because of that?”

Virgil just kept rambling. Logan continued typing. He wasn’t sure how this was helping, but at least Logan was still going which was what he wanted.

The quickening of his heart was in some ways helping Virgil to focus on this as well. They seemed to be getting closer and closer to finishing. You’d think Virgil’s nerves would be getting better, but they weren’t. He was starting to feel worse but in a different way. He could feel that dry pain you get behind your eyes when you haven’t gotten enough sleep and are tired beyond your mind, which was very distracting.

For once he was Logan’s motivation, and he really didn’t want to mess that up. He wanted to feel helpful.

A soft sound almost like a faint melody seemed to play though.

_ The dimming of the room is reminding you of how relieving it would be to sleep right now. You’re soo tired. It would be so much easier to just give in._

Virgil started faltering again, and so did Logan, not that Virgil noticed.

_Soft things. Comforting darkness. Lullabies. Feel yourself slowly swaying as consciousness becomes harder to grasp and sleep sounds so lovely._

The voice continued. Virgil wasn’t able to focus on anything else. His energy felt completely drained. He felt himself fall forward and everything went dark.

* * *

The soft orb of light seemed to burn slightly against his closed eyelids. He groggily allowed his eyes to blink open and blearily looked around wondering why he wasn’t in his room. He slowly sat up and rubbed the side of his face that felt weird from laying on a desk. As he looked around and took in where they were it began to dawn on him what they had been doing last night.

“Shoot!” He sprung out of his seat and immediately looked over to the computer monitor.

The other sides startled awake at his exclamation.

Logan, who had been previously lying face down on the keys, woke up the computer as he sat up, just to show the same unfinished document which now had a bunch of random letters and characters taking up several lines on the page.

“Crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap…” Virgil started aggressively pacing around the room, pulling at his hair, and continuing to mutter exclamations.

The other sides were groggily waking up more as well. They all started to stretch out the odd kinks they had gotten from sleeping in unnatural positions. As the situation seemed to dawn on the others they grew concerned as well, though not as vocal about it as Virgil.

Suddenly they heard slurping, and all turned to the other side of the room.

There stood a guy, who shared their same face, leaning on a wall. He was wearing a black jacket and sunglasses, slurping on a dark coffee. He took the straw out of his mouth and crossed his arms.

“You know, you all have been treating me terribly lately. You know that, right?”

Virgil glared and clenched his fists.

“Remy! Why did you have to do that? We really needed to get that done!”

Remy took another loud sip. Then he pulled his sunglasses done enough to look over them with a raised eyebrow.

“Um, I was doing my job. Sorry if you’re all so unprepared, but I’m not going to let you stay awake forever just because you all are horrible at doing what you need to. Besides, it’s not the end of the world.”

“You may not think so, but it was important to get done! And besides, we’ve been perfectly fine running on a few hours of sleep before anyways.”

“Virgil’s right.”

Immediately recognizing the voice, Virgil turned his head to glare at the snake boy himself who was glaring right back but with a smirk on his face.

“We’ve totally been fine working during the day with only a few hours of sleep.”

Remy rolled his eyes.

“No, Remy’s right.”

They turned to face Logan who sighed. He stood up and adjusted his necktie, although he still looked pretty disheveled.

“Taking better care of your body is vital to living a healthy productive life. It should never be a decision on whether physical health or academic success is more important. We need to plan accordingly so they are not a battle against each other, and we can succeed at both. Procrastinating has been a struggle of Thomas’s for a while now. It’s my job to help him stay on top of things, so maybe part of this is on me. Nevertheless, dwelling on what has already happened isn’t going to help us now. We need to accept the poor decision that was made and the consequences of it, but still do the best we can to remedy the situation.”

Virgil was about to interject, when he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder.

Patton was giving him a small tired smile.

“They’re right, kiddo. Everything’s going to be alright. We usually manage to work things out.” Patton turned to Remy. “We’re sorry about how we were treating you, Remy. We’ll try to do better with getting enough sleep.”

Remy just rolled his eyes.

“Whatever. Just don’t make me drag you all into a slumber again, or you’re going to regret it. Later,” And he just dramatically walked out.

The sides all turned to each other.

“Alright, let’s go help Thomas figure out what to do now.”

“I’ll draw up a new schedule for the day, fitting in finishing and submitting the paper at an optimal time.” Logan said.

“And I’ll help cheer him up, reminding him that he can still do this. It’s a good thing this professor seems pretty lenient about late work.”

“Yeah, but Thomas is still going to feel bad that he turned in his first assignment late.” Virgil commented, as he held his arm, almost half hugging himself.

“That may be true," Patton said. "And I’m sure that’s something that he can’t really help, since that’s just who he is. But we can still do out best after a mistake like this. This could turn into a bad habit, but if we really try to plan accordingly, we can hopefully keep that from happening. It may be hard at times to focus, but I think we can do it. Now let’s all go help Thomas through this.”

And with that, the four of them began to sink out so they could go over this new plan with Thomas.

**Author's Note:**

> So far, some of the ideas I have to write for this fandom are short stories like this. This is actually my first time posting a one shot.  
I do have an idea for a longer one, but I'm not sure yet.


End file.
